Growned up thoughts….Unpublished from 2012

So as the Malaysia Diaries are taking longer than expected to type, and the intensity of training and uni is on the increase, I unfortunately have left you, my love blogless. So as I sit here on my uber comfy couch, ice pack on knee, waiting for one of my darling best girlfriends to arrive, I vent my spleen on the week that was.

I’ve had a lot of general grown up thoughts this week. So apologies, but shit’s getting political.

Much like the rest of the world that plays around with social media, earlier this week my feeds and inboxes, walls and wherever else were bombarded with Kony 2012. As I just typed those 8 characters, Kony 2012, I could already sense the cumulative groan from everyone that has read thus far into this post.

That my friends, is whats wrong with the world.

At first we were outraged, we were impassioned, some were critical, and now we are bored. Waiting for the next big shock. It’s not the first time either. Think Hurricane Katrina, Haiti, the smoking child, that pig with the voice of a two year old. We all rose to the occasion over a year ago in the 2011 Brisbane floods, we donated, we cleaned up, but after about a month (which is a while, but consider this happened to ‘us’) we were over it. We switched off the radio ads, flicked through the related feature articles, but yet there were still many families and businesses not quite back on their feet and in need of aide. I’m as guilty as anyone of neglecting my fellow man, point is, I’m not overly proud of it.

Anyway, earlier in the week, this video did the rounds, clocked up millions of views on youtube, and received coverage on just about every mainstream media outlet ever. Thursday, it was everywhere. Since then, you’ve had to look for it. Not hard, but its not all up in your face anymore.

Long story short, kids in Africa are being kidnapped by this Kony guy and his group, the Lords Resistance Army (LRA). Young boys are being made into soldiers, girls are made into sex slaves, people are being disfigured, parents are killed etc etc. Now if up until this video, you were unaware that there is some messed up stuff going on in Africa, my question to you is, where in gods name have you been? How is that rock you’ve been living under? Must be comfy…pity about the terrible reception. Even if you’re not a news watcher//paper reader or just don’t have any interest outside the four walls of your own home, pretty sure those of you who enjoy blockbusters and Leo films would have watched Blood Diamond, might not be a ‘100% accurate true story’ you get an idea of how things are over there. No Blood Diamond… how about Black Hawk Down? It’s not just Africa, there are questionable governments that allow for some pretty inappropriate behavior all over the world.

Point is, no one cares. Well, really cares. And most people are quite happy to dismiss the worlds issues as, well just not their problem. They’re more interested to know what Bligh will do for them if we vote her back in, the occasional citizen being a menace to society, and firemen rescuing cats from trees.

The ‘it’s not our problem’ is probably the criticism I heard the most on the Kony 2012 outbreak. “Why are they targeting Western Governments when it’s an African problem.” Jason Russell (clip director) put it perfectly in his interview with Kyle && Jackie O on Thursday evening. Essentially he said that we’re all too patriotic. Americans are only interested in American problems, Australians with Australia and so on and so forth. But we forget that we are all humans, we are all people, and these are people problems. Humanitarian problems. We need to forget borders, and see each other as people. It’s not good enough that bad people are doing horrific things to people, especially kids. Regardless of whether they’re black, white, brown, green, old, young, or even fat. And we all know how I feel about fat people (read previous material).

The other thing that kinda struck a chord was the bit where masses of people thought letting his son know that there are real bad guys out there, and that reality isn’t made out of rainbows and teletubbies is a bad idea.